The present invention concerns a method and a device for individually adjusting a hearing device for a hearing device user.
Technical advances and new scientific insights lead to a continuous development of hearing devices. This concerns both the signal processing algorithms used and the individual parameter sets calculated from the audiometric data for hearing device settings. In many cases, these developments are considered in new devices.
However, due to the continuous wearing of an auditory system, a person hard of hearing becomes accustomed to the transfer properties of this auditory system, and thus, for example, to the sound. If he requires a new device, for example due to a worsening of his hearing, he often feels the unfamiliar sound to be strange and refuses a new auditory system. This refusal in particular occurs given modern auditory systems, since, in these, very smooth frequency responses can frequently be realized due to the advances in digital technology. For this reason, given a post-treatment, the same type of auditory system already worn is often used instead of a modern auditory system. Thus no improvement occurs for the person hard of hearing, and he does not benefit from the development of auditory systems.
Nevertheless, if a hearing device user is ready to use a new device, the hearing device acoustician generally attempts to match by hand the acoustics of the old device with those of the new in order to ease the transfer. Since modern hearing devices are extremely complex, it is often not possible in this manner to find the optimal setting at which, on the one hand, the sound of the old device is matched and at which, on the other hand, the advantages of the new device are still shown to be advantageous.
A further easing for the transfer to a new hearing device system can be achieved in that a plurality of acclimation stages are used. The acclimation stages effect a slow approach by approximation to the actual aforementioned amplification of the auditory system, independent of the actual client wishes. In the adaptation to a new auditory system, a specific acclimation stage (“for the inexperienced”) is first selected. If the person hard of hearing has become accustomed to this setting over a period of some weeks, at the next visit to the acoustician the next acclimation stage is set. In this manner, the actual desired setting that is optimal from the audiological point of view is achieved. However, this requires a plurality of sessions at the acoustician. During this acclimation cycle, the person hard of hearing must become accustomed to a new sound. If this does not succeed, the acoustician must optimize the new auditory system by hand or, respectively, aided by questionnaires.
In known systems, the parameters of the old hearing device are read out or, respectively, the characteristic curves are displayed in the adaptation software. The new hearing device is then manually adjusted such that the amplification curves come as close as possible to the old ones. This manual method is very time-consuming and, due to the complexity of modern hearing devices, leads to good correspondence only with great effort and given sufficient expertise. In all cases, the transfer of the setting parameters directly (for example, channel amplification) does not lead to success, since the setting parameters lead to different absolute amplification characteristic curves, even in various hearing devices of the same family of a manufacturer.